by Lynn Sheene
Claire cringed as she overheard the man mutter Nazis. She straightened the seams of her Schiaparelli gown, traced fingers over her necklace and sauntered toward them.
His voice dropped to a piercing whisper. “They say they’re going to invade France or England next.”
Claire slid in next to von Richter, hooked her arm in his. “Alby, darling, are you going to attack those Parisian clubs you were telling me about?”
The thin scar on his chin curled as he smirked and slid his hand out of view down her backside. “I already have, Fraulein, many times.”
“Russell sends his regrets for his tardiness. He’ll meet you in his study shortly. May I pull you gentlemen away from our festivities?”
The dim light of the study revealed heavy chairs gathered around a fireplace and leather-bound books in mahogany shelves from ceiling to floor. Russell’s immense desk faced the door.
“Your husband must be quite a scholar,” von Richter said as Claire shut the door behind them, bottle of scotch and three glasses in her hand.
“So it seems.” Claire waved Merkel and von Richter into chairs as she poured. She sat on the arm of von Richter’s chair, curving against his side. “Alby, darling, tell me about Paris.”
The bottle was empty and the last revelers were being poured into waiting cars when Russell materialized. Von Richter clumsily disentangled Claire from his lap. Merkel swayed as he stood. Russell appeared not to notice and apologized for the delay. Claire bid the men good night and blew von Richter a kiss as she closed the door behind her. With that performance, those Germans should buy Russell’s steel at top dollar. Not that the success would pay for Russell’s mercy. But it would give her more time.
The upper floor was quiet; gold-leaf sconces radiated ovals of light through the hallway. Claire shut her bedroom door and slumped onto a velvet stool facing her mirrored vanity. She frowned at her pale reflection and smoothed the dark honey curl over her right brow. A fresh coat of lipstick was drawn over her full lips and mascara combed onto thick lashes, but her deep blue eyes were hard as images careened through her mind.
She was sixteen when she met Bernard R. Morris. That was how he introduced himself as he stood on her porch in a pressed shirt and tie, his hair slicked back with pomade. She stepped out to get a better look; no one had come to their Oklahoma farm in so long.
Clara May, as she was called then, had been up for days, soothing Mama’s gaunt face with a wet cloth, washing her wasted body, cooking anything she could scrounge up into a broth in hopes Mama would eat. Clara begged her to accept even a sip of water, but her mother’s cracked mouth stayed closed. Tired, so tired, was all Mama would say. Tired of living, Clara thought she meant, or what passed for living on that dried-up land. And so Mama starved and withered in Clara’s weary arms while Pa and her brothers worked the farm, only coming inside at night to sleep and be fed.
Seeing another soul that morning made Clara come alive. Bernard was clean-shaven with a thin moustache and smelled like warm wood. He looked her up and down and stepped close. Selling Bibles all the way from New York City.
Three days later the musty scent of death settled over the dusty farmhouse, and Mama’s rough-hewn casket was laid out across the worn table in the middle of the room. Her brothers, Hank and Willy, stood heads down, their meaty hands folded in front of them. Pa seethed silently behind Clara’s shoulder. To him, Mama’s death was a personal insult, just like the drought. Clara stepped forward and fingered the jagged edge of the coffin rim, breathing in the sharp tang of freshly cut pine.
She felt Pa’s hard gaze digging into her back. “If you can’t stand here like a proper daughter and honor your Ma, Clara May, you get back in that kitchen.”
There was no need for Clara to look inside the casket. She’d dressed Mama in that sky-blue dress she favored, combed her thin hair into a bun, tucked a faded yellow flower into her top buttonhole. Though Clara felt a piece had been torn from inside her, from her aching stomach to her burning eyes, she knew there wasn’t even any need to cry. Her mother wasn’t really in there anymore. Mama had escaped Pa’s temper and the farm the only way she could.
A burst of heat burned away the pain in Clara’s heart. There had to be more to look forward to than dying. She needed more.
It had only been two long steps to the screen door. Three short miles to town and Mrs. Johnson’s boardinghouse, where that handsome Bible salesman was loading up to head back to New York City. Clara left town that night in the front seat of a Studebaker with Bernard’s hand on her knee.
The sting of the long-buried pain pulled Claire back to the present. She took a deep breath and fished inside her gown for the letter. Thick fingers had painstakingly printed Clara May Wagner, New York City.
Claire could recognize Willy’s heavy-handed print anywhere. She had worked on it with him, their heads bent close over a flickering candle the winter after he quit school to help Pa. She felt a familiar pang as she remembered the soft smile lighting his sweet eyes when she’d praised his careful lettering in front of Mama. But by the following winter, when he had time to practice again, he had given up the idea of learning.
She carefully smoothed the letter open against the vanity’s lacquered surface.
Dear Clara May,
I hope this letter finds you well in New York City. Bernard Morris is back in town today. He says you are rich now. He has seen you in the newspaper and will pass this letter to you.
Pa died last winter. The drought here got real bad. Worse every year. Finally, last summer we lost the farm. There wasn’t much left of it, anyway. We live in town now, next to Mr. Nelson. I drive a truck for Morris. Hank works in the slaughterhouse. We don’t need anything. I just wanted to let you know about things. I hope New York City is as pretty as you wanted.
Willy
Claire stared into the mirror’s reflection, the letter gripped in numb hands.
Gone. The past she had worked so hard to escape had disintegrated on its own. She couldn’t scrape together any sympathy for Pa. Any strained bond they might have shared died long ago with Mama. The farm—well, it was just a dirt hellhole that swallowed up lives. Maybe Willy and Hank could have a life now. She’d send money to help.
I hope New York City is as pretty as you wanted. Claire examined the room surrounding her. The glitter of the Venetian chandelier reflected off the white Italian marble floors and lacquered furniture. The best money could buy, a room of her own, designed for a woman of her standing. But also a crypt, a mausoleum filled with finery. As cold and empty as her insides.
Heavy footsteps lumbered down the hall. Claire listened, breath held. A high-pitched giggle, the steps continued, a door opened and closed. Air drained from her chest. Russell had once again found himself one of the serving girls they’d hired for the night. Good. A few hours reprieve, then.
Clara May Wagner. Still, with his connections, Russell would uncover everything tomorrow. The blue-blooded wife he’d married to claim a glimmer of respectability was a fraud. A destitute farmer’s daughter.
Bernard received just the tip of Russell’s anger. Claire had made a fool out of him for the past five years. He wouldn’t let her stay, not now. But his reputation was on the line. He couldn’t afford to drag her through the mud; he’d be exposed too.
He’d make her disappear.
She fought to breathe. The walls were cracking around her. Claire Harris Stone was exposed. Lost.
Her eyes focused on a black-and-white photo tucked in the corner of the mirror. A quiet garden scene, artfully captured, no larger than a snapshot. A gift from Laurent during their final afternoon together, months ago. Before her lover returned to Paris. Alone.
The beating of her heart sparked a warmth in her chest that spread through her body. She pulled the photo from the frame, caressed the crisp paper with her fingers.
Lost, or could this mean free?
The word fluttered inside her. She glided to the painting hanging next to her bed. In a massive
portrait, nearly life-size, Russell leaned against a fireplace, a bulky elbow resting on a stone mantelpiece.
Claire smirked up at his glaring face. “Have you enjoyed guarding your wife’s bed and her so very valuable jewels, Russell darling?”
She tugged on the right edge of the carved frame. The painting swung away from the wall, revealing a locked safe. The walls might be cracking, but she was going to kick them down.
A single phone call, a flurry of packing, and Claire slipped downstairs. Emptied of guests and staff hired for the night, the house was dark and still. She crept into the shadowed kitchen, padding toward the door.
“Mrs. Stone.”
The voice stopped her in her tracks. Davis leaned against the counter, a glass of scotch in his hand. He took in the red traveling suit, hat and sable, the hatbox and leather-bound train case clenched in her hands.
“Best of luck to you, Claire.”
Claire grinned and let out a breath. “Thank you. Same to you, Davis.”
LaGuardia Airport Marine Terminal, New York. May 9, 1940.
Sunrise gilded the East River as Claire descended from the airport terminal onto the metal gangway. The docked Yankee Clipper floated like an immense metal seabird at the end of the passage below. Bullet-shaped engines rumbled from beneath the massive wingspan. Whirling propellers buffeted the line of passengers advancing into the airship’s belly. Claire welcomed the cool bite of the prop’s wash against her face.
A young officer stepped up to her side, his white Clipper uniform glinting in the morning light. “She’s something to see, isn’t she?” He meant the Clipper, but his eyes were on Claire and her suit, cut to show an hourglass figure.
She offered him a smile but her thoughts focused on the throbbing in her chest. It had been so long since she felt this mix of freedom and—no, not regret. Never that. Today the scents were a cocktail of gasoline and the river’s briny flotsam. Not choking dust or death’s cloying musk.
“Ready to fly over the ocean?” Pride resonated in his voice.
She made a last searching look back at the early morning crowd inside the round terminal building. Russell didn’t know she’d gone. Not yet. Her smile brightened as she slipped her arm through the officer’s and adjusted the sable that threatened to blow off her shoulders. “You have no idea how ready I am, flyboy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” A blush darkened his tan as he reached for the hatbox at her feet.
Claire gripped the silver handle of her train case and sauntered down the gangway. Her gloved hand slid along the Clipper’s cool metal hide. Inside, she chose an empty seat next to the window and set her case on the floor beneath her feet. A breathy kiss brushed the officer’s cheek as she retrieved her hatbox and then settled into silk cushions.
The plane was occupied mostly with State Department types. Dark wool suits, long coats, briefcases tucked discreetly beneath their seats. Except for a few military officers in dress uniforms, they were a sea of charcoal. She could feel their stares as she shrugged off her sable. She was used to the looks, but today, the only woman on board, it felt like a bull’s-eye was painted on her back.
She adjusted her hat and smoothed the skirt against her legs. Andrew, darling Andrew, shook his head this morning when he met her in front of the marine terminal with her papers, but the red Schiaparelli suit was the most conservative thing she owned.
As close to a friend as she’d met in New York, Andrew and Claire made good sport of the city’s nightlife the first year after she left Bernard. She taught the buttoned-up college boy the finer points of speakeasies. He spoke five languages and taught her one. Upper-crust American English. When she phoned him last night after seven years, he refused to help at first. The risk is too great, he told her. The risk to you, you mean, she replied. Then she wondered aloud what the State Department’s Chief of Protocol ambassador would say to the kinks his son-in-law enjoyed in bed. The ones his wife didn’t have the stomach for. The phone line went quiet for a moment then Andrew came up with a plan.
He met her at sunrise and handed her a thick envelope. Your ticket, a passport validated for Europe by the State Department, and Portuguese and French tourist visas, he said, made out to Claire Harris. But, you realize that after you land in Lisbon, you are on your own. This is not an official operation. These are only papers with stamps. If something goes wrong, not only have I never heard of you, Claire, no one else will have either.
The roar of the engine and churning propellers filled the compartment as the plane skimmed across the water’s surface, then, with a lurch, took to the sky. Claire pressed back in her seat as she watched the airport then the skyline drop away. The last time she’d run, the very day Mama died, there had been a broken-down farmhouse behind her. She swore she’d never end up like that, worn down with nothing left but despair. Staring down at the Atlantic, Claire could still feel the packed dirt road beneath her bare feet.
The plane straightened out and the noise dimmed to a roar. Claire pulled the diamond wedding ring off her finger and squeezed it in her palm. The bite of the stone against her skin didn’t diminish the ache growing in her diaphragm.
It wasn’t the end of her marriage that hurt, she realized, but the waste of effort, of years. She slipped the band on the ring finger of her right hand and smiled grimly. It was the first diamond she’d been given as Claire Harris Stone. Too conventional for her taste and not the biggest rock, by far, but damn well paid for. Her marriage, after all, had always been one of convenience. Convenient for him to own a pretty, high-society wife he could cheat on; convenient for her to have the wealth and position she needed. She breathed in and welcomed the throbbing in her chest. It meant she was still alive. It meant another chance.
She flipped open her new passport. A blurry photograph of a dark blonde, eyes shadowed, expression formal, passable for Claire caught on a rough morning. The adjacent page was filled with official looking stamps permitting travel to Europe. She looked out the window as the plane shifted its flight. Twenty-six hours to Lisbon. There she would drop off the end of the world. A train to Paris. Then Laurent and a new life.
She’d met Laurent Olivier last summer at a gallery in Manhattan. Half-drunk and bored as hell, she was wasting the afternoon with a friend looking at photos of Paris: Old men with gnarled faces leaned against worn brick buildings in narrow streets. Children smoked cigarettes on street corners. Lovers kissed in shadowed doorways. Darkly romantic, yes, but not something to hang over the mantel. She beelined for the alcohol.
Three cocktails later, Claire lost her friend to a married Texas oilman and found a quiet corner. She was about to hail a cab home when she saw it. All by itself, a small photo in a thick black frame.
“This one is so different, it doesn’t fit with the others.” A delicious accent, the words formed deep in the mouth.
She was so absorbed by the picture, it was a moment before she turned. Still, her body flushed when she saw him. Tall and lean; his lips, directly in front of her gaze, were full and brought to mind how they might feel on her skin. His features were angular, an artist’s sharp stroke for a cheekbone, a jaw, the nose. A half-empty glass was gripped in one hand, a burning Gauloises in the other. He squinted through the curling smoke.
“You like it, no?” His warm brown eyes stared intently into hers. “Then I am glad I brought it. I am Laurent Olivier. This is my show.”
She forgot the taxi.
In the summer that followed, Claire hadn’t learned a lick of French, but she knew the bitter tar smell of a Gauloises and why her society friends had insisted for years she take a lover on the side. More importantly, she was reminded that, after five cold years of being another of her husband’s acquisitions, there was a living, feeling woman underneath all that polish. Of course, her friends hadn’t meant for Claire to chase off after anyone, no matter how talented he was in the sheets.
Neither had Claire.
Claire shifted in her seat as she remembered her last afternoon with Laurent. A
hotel room like countless others in Greenwich Village. The furniture a little more sophisticated, the art a bit more deco, maybe, for Washington Square. Leather-bound trunks were pushed up against the wall, lids open. He’d been packing when she’d interrupted him.
A long afternoon was spent gorged on stolen pleasure, and they lay cupped together in his small bed. They faced the dim room’s one small window, drowsy bodies tangled, his leg flung over her rounded hip. Half-asleep, he traced a pattern on her bare shoulder. She rolled onto her hip at the edge of the bed; the cotton sheets slipped down below her thighs. She felt Laurent stir next to her, heard the flick of a lighter as he lit a cigarette.
“I am leaving on the ship tonight, ma chérie. To Paris,” he said.
His few unsold photographs were piled up against an open trunk, frames leaning front to back, ready to be packed. She slipped off the bed and pulled out the smallest photo, cradling in it with one hand. A faint stream of light filtering through the curtains illuminated the picture, enhancing the quiet dreaminess of the scene.
“So soon?” She devoured the image with her eyes to fight the emptiness rising in her belly.
“Oui.” He snuffed out his cigarette as he climbed from the bed. “Why do you always look at that one, Claire? It is so naive, no? Done on a lark, for a friend. I don’t know why I even brought it.” He wrapped his arms around her.
His naked warmth softened her back as she studied the photo. She shook her head. A simple garden scene. Worth less than the price of the silk slip he’d torn from her shoulders. It was impossible to describe what made this small image so arresting. It drew her in, that’s all.
He tapped the photo’s glass and spoke into her hair. “I can take you to this place. I will undress you in the grass and—”